Early online communities aimed to augment local place, not escape it

Evidence

Cyborganic’s central premise was that online and face-to-face interaction are mutually sustaining and can be used together to build uniquely robust communities. The project was to use computer-mediated communication, not to transcend geographical place, but to build a local, networked community. Those who led the project wanted to create such a community in their own lives. But they also wanted to demonstrate the possibilities of using technology in this way out of a sense that others, too, would benefit from Cyborganic’s example and its project to spread the gospel of networked, local community. The project was pursued as a business startup and though that enterprise provided the impetus and framework (both technical and imaginative) for the community, the two were symbiotic aspects of a whole that can only be understood holistically and within the context of the Web industry that emerged in San Francisco in the 1990s. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 131

Cyborganic’s central premise was that online and face-to-face interaction are mutually sustaining and can be used together to build uniquely robust communities. The project was to use computer-mediated communication, not to transcend geographical place, but to build a local, networked community. Those who led the project wanted to create such a community in their own lives. But they also wanted to demonstrate the possibilities of using technology in this way out of a sense that others, too, would benefit from Cyborganic’s example and its project to spread the gospel of networked, local community. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the standard cyber-utopian narrative that the internet was about transcending geography — relevant to debates about place and networked individualism. — connects to: Online participatory culture predates the dot-com boom by years — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 80; The early internet’s value lay precisely in sheltering niche subcultures from mainstream attention; In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 154 (+4 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘place-based Silicon Valley’ — the prehistory of tech community as geographically rooted, useful for a piece on how social media’s community rhetoric slid from local place to global platform.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 131

Broader Connections

• The early internet’s value lay precisely in sheltering niche subcultures from mainstream attention #contradicts (0.85)
• In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures #complicates (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 154
• Second-modernity identity needs summoned the internet into everyday life #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 114
• Early internet use felt like entering a separate fantasy world under a made-up name #contradicts (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 984
• Space-binding media create communities dispersed across distance rather than place #contradicts (0.75) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 623